FINAL PAPER

Thanks to the creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, also known as ARPANET, the first workable model of the Internet came about in the 1960’s. About half a century later the Internet is now a global network that connects millions of computers together and something that is a huge part of our daily lives. Whether it is used for research or to find the funniest cat video on YouTube, the Internet can either be seen as a good addition to our world or as something that is slowly but surely deteriorating our abilities to perform certain tasks as normal human beings should be able to. It is important for people to know the benefits and disadvantages that the Internet can bring to them so that they can learn how to use it to better themselves. Nicholas Carr is the author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and he has also published books and articles on topics such as technology, business, and culture. Carr believes that the Internet is affecting us in a negative way but Clive Thompson, a Canadian freelance journalist, blogger, science, technology writer ,and author of “Public Thinking”, does not agree with Carr at all and believes that the Internet is actually benefiting us. Clay Shirky is on the same page as Thompson, he wrote “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” and is consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. This paper as a whole will go farther in depth by looking at each of the texts and the claims that the authors make to determine at the end which side of the argument I agree with more and give my own opinion on what I think about this topic.  

In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr looks at what negative effects the constant use of the Internet can have on someone. Carr states that he himself has noticed that he has been affected by the Internet, his ability to function cognitively as well as he used to has been diminished. He himself writes, “I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet”. Carr can no longer concentrate on long texts without being distracted and he blames the Internet for that. As he has talked to others he now knows that he is not the only one who is seeing these differences in themselves. Carr includes anecdotes from scholarly people such as Scott Karp and Bruce Friedman who are experiencing the same things as himself. Karp who once loved to read books has stopped reading books altogether and Friedman, a pathologist, states that he can no longer read War and Peace anymore because he just begins to skim it. In efforts to strengthen his argument Carr also includes Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist, who believes that the Internet can shape our neural circuits. He also includes other people who have seen with simple technologies such as the typewriter, mechanical clock that it has changed the way people do things, how Socrates thought writing would ruin their knowledge, and when the printing press was invented that it would make people lazy because books would be easily accessed. Overall Carr gives all of these examples to prove that the Internet can greatly affect, in a negative manner, the capacity for concentration and contemplation. A strength in his text is that he uses pathos a lot, he tries to make the text very personal so that people can tend to sway on his side of the argument.He gives a lot of examples on how various people have been affected but that is also a great weakness in his text. Most of what he uses as evidence and proof are just merely strong opinions which are passed as facts and his position on the argument is mostly one sided and he does not bother to look at the benefits the Internet can bring to our society.

Clay Thompson author of “Public Thinking” does not agree at all with Carr’s side of the argument, in fact believes the complete opposite. He believes that the Internet is actually benefiting us and making us better writers, readers and thinkers. The amount of writing the Internet has inspired is a very important and good change for people in this society. Thompson includes some anecdotes like Carr does but to show the good that the Internet can bring. One of the people he includes is Ory Okolloh, whom with the help of the Internet, set up a blog and began writing about things that were taking place in her country as a way for people outside of the country to know what was going on. Thompson does believe that the Internet has changed us but for the better because back then people never wrote for pleasure, according to his mother, they wrote only when they were required to and even then it was not much. Deborah Brandt is included in Thompson’s text to show the benefits of writing. She states, “People read in order to generate writing; we read from the posture of the writer; we write to other people who write”. Reading and writing have now become one thanks to the advancements in technology. Due to all of this writing it is helping clarify peoples thinking. Thompson includes Cecil Day Lewis, a poet, to support that claim he states, “I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind…If it were clear in my mind I should have no incentive to write about it”. With writing down things to help clarify peoples thought also comes the audience. Thompson includes in his text that writing for an audience can greatly improve the way people write because they know that someone else will be reading it and criticizing their work. He includes experiments that professors from well known universities/colleges, such as Douglas College and Stanford University, have conducted on their own students. In both cases these professors found that when their students, when writing for an audience, tended to write better and more. Thompson does a good job in his text in supporting his claims with valid and clear evidence which is a strength in his text. A weakness in his text is that some of the evidence he uses can be difficult to relate to, such as the study done on Stanford students, because not a lot of people can be said to be at the same scholarly level as those who attend Stanford.

Clay Shirky’s text “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” agrees, for the most part with Thompson’s text. In his text he states that many people think that the Internet is making the younger generations stupid but what some people do not know is that the belief that new technologies are ruining intellectual life goes back very far. When the printing press came out people thought that it would ruin intellectual life but it did the complete opposite. With all of the new novels, newspapers, and scientific journals being produced and shown to the world it increased the intellectual range of the people.  Taking time to watch television and participate in what some what would consider “distractions” can actually be good for the cognitive health of people. Shirky includes evidence on how the Internet can be a great addition when he talks about Ushahidi a “Kenyan crisis mapping tool invented in 2008, now aggregates citizen reports about crises the world over” and “PatientsLikeMe, a website designed to accelerate medical research by getting patients to publicly share their health information, has assembled a larger group of sufferers of Lou Gehrig's disease than any pharmaceutical agency in history, by appealing to the shared sense of seeking medical progress”. He accepts the fact that the society that we live in is “characterized by lots of throwaway cultural artifacts” but that is okay because the “issue isn't whether there's lots of dumb stuff online—there is, just as there is lots of dumb stuff in bookstores”. As technologies develop and become more advanced, the people will develop along with it. Shirky’s text is strong because he looks at both sides of the argument and rebuts the opposing views with evidence that he has found.

Many people might say that as a child born in the 20th century I grew up with all of this technology but my situation was different. Growing up I did not have the privilege of having different technological devices. We had a computer at home, but there was no Internet. The main use of the computer at that time was for my sister and I to play educational games which were accessed by inserting a compact disc into the base unit or go on Paint and doodle. It was not until I was in around the fourth grade that my mother and father were practically forced to get Internet, simply because my sister was beginning to need it for school work and various projects. Even then it was simply only used for educational purposes, and I did not use it very much because I was very young and did not really need it for anything important.

As the years progressed I began to need to use the Internet for school projects and simply just for entertainment. With the use of the Internet over the years I feel like it has been of great benefit to me. It allows for me to gain knowledge within seconds on any basically any topic I can think of. There is many people who might say that since the invention of the Internet, many people can no longer read, write or perform cognitively as well as they used to be able to. They say it distracts them but Shirkey states, “In the history of print, we got erotic novels 100 years before we got scientific journals, and complaints about distraction have been rampant…”. I agree with Shirky, there has always been distractions such as television and erotic novels so why blame the Internet?

Viewing my own experience in using the Internet over the years, I have not seen it affect me as much as other say that it has affected them. Being able to view texts online, such as eBooks or anything else, has been very helpful. Having the text in from and eBook or Portable Document Format file in front of me allows me to take these texts anywhere and be able to read in a more efficient manner. I can still read books which are printed on paper and understand them as well as when I did not have the Internet but if there was something that I did not understand I could go on Google and search for help on the web. Not only has it benefitted the way I read but also the way I write. As Thompson states in his text, “The new forms of digital writing, particularly their “public” character, involve writing for an audience, and this significantly improves writing…”. Things such as posting on a blog, sending an email, or tweeting can all improve the way we write. Because I know that someone else anywhere in the world can be reading what I have posted I tend to make sure that things such as my grammar are correct and I actually think more about what I am going to write. 

Overall I believe that using the Internet had helped me out a lot in various aspects. I believe I think better, and not less, than I would if I did not have the Internet because it allows for me to learn so much from other peoples work. Being able to have the Internet actually helps me think better because it allows for me to expand my thoughts by quickly accessing other texts about the same topic(s). I can read a text online and still think about it as much as I would have if the book was in a physical form. The Internet lets me connect with people and be able to get their own opinions on a certain topic to be able to further analyze it, which maybe could not have been done as quickly if the others lived in another city, state or even country.

Works Cited 

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 01 July 2008. Web. 05 Dec. 2014. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/4/>.

Shirky, Clay. "Does the Internet Make You Smarter?" The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 4 June 2010. Web. 05 Dec. 2014. <http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334>.

Thompson, Clive. "Public Thinking." Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. N.p.: Penguin, 2013. 47-69. Print.

"Who Invented the Internet?" History.com. A&E Television Networks, 18 Dec. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2014. <http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-invented-the-internet>.